By Oh Young-jin
Managing Editor
For today’s column, I have chosen three topics and applied a “what-if” formula to them. The issues are our newspaper’s ongoing series about Dokdo and sex slavery orchestrated by Japan’s colonial government; a recent anti-child porn crackdown and the latest dilemma facing the ruling Saenuri Party’s standard bearer Park Geun-hye.
Our paper and the Northeast Asian History Foundation decided to run a series of contributing columns by outside writers that provide a third-party view of Japan’s current territorial claim on Korea’s easternmost islets.
The idea of the series was floated during a dinner attended by senior managers of our paper and the foundation.
The conversation first started with a discussion about Japan’s lack of historical conscientiousness. We observed how expansionist Japan invaded neighboring nations and caused the Pacific War, killing millions of people and incurring untold amounts in property damage. Instead of showing deep remorse and considered reflection, we all agreed that Japan is trying to dodge the burden of its history. We also did our share of lamenting that our neighbor is stuck in the puerile mentality of not taking responsibility for her actions.
Just before the dinner finished, a suggestion was made to present opinions from a wide spectrum of Korean and foreign experts so as to help Japan face up to the wrongs it has done and act as a responsible leader of the world.
Guy Sorman, a French intellectual, accepted our request to write at very short notice and contributed the first in the series, which is interesting because his piece touches both Japan and Korea. Sorman tells the Japanese that they should stop acting as victims and face the fact that they were perpetrators of the Second World War.
He pointed out that Japan brought upon itself the atomic bomb attacks by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, sad as they were. For Korea, the Frenchman suggests making a proposal to Japan to research history together in order to enable the people of both countries to gain a correct understanding of it.
My “what-if” question assumes that Japan accepts Sorman’s suggestion. Japan would have more to gain than lose. Its neighbors would respect it more for doing so, which in turn would endow that nation with leadership role on the world stage. Then, it could use its political capital to promote world peace. I think that the absence of such a change on their national consciousness is one of the reasons the country has been stuck in the doldrums.
I strongly condemn acts of child exploitation.
I agree that child pornography a crime against children and should be cracked down on.
But I do have doubts about how effective the prosecutors’ declaration of war against it is.
After a series of crimes against youngsters, the prosecutors declared that they would be very tough on those who possess, distribute and produce child porn.
It goes without saying that the declaration is part of a knee-jerk publicity-oriented PR strategy, which I think is acceptable because such an act not only shows that the government is doing something about the taxpayer’s grievances but actually gives them peace of mind.
But the feasibility of such a war is questionable.
The concept of the prosecutors’ porn war is traditional because it aims to punish all people involved in the vice _ consumers as well as producers. There appears to be nothing wrong with such a dual approach. It has proved effective in fighting drug trafficking and other evil activities.
But the problem with taking this approach against child porn is that it is traded over the Internet.
First of all, there is no knowing how large the market is out there.
The way transactions are made is hard to detect, above all, simply because there must be so many deals taking place on the Internet, many of them under the guise of benign behavior.
In terms of punishing producers and distributors, there are few conceptual problems because such acts are designated as illegal and there is a social consensus behind doing so.
But punishing one for downloading it can be problematic for a couple of reasons. The first challenge is to catch those who possess it in the first place.
Distribution and production involves an organized effort by multiple parties, which increases the chances of exposure, and thereby, of also being caught. But possession is a private, individual act, meaning there is less chance of exposure and getting caught. Finding more effective ways of discouraging individuals from possessing child pornography is pivotal because an absence of consumers would mean an absence of markets.
On this issue, I need only offer a “what” question: What is the best way to fight child pornography and eliminate it from our society?
Due to space constraints, I have only one thing to say about an ongoing internal fight inside the ruling Saenuri Party, which could set back its presidential candidate Park Geun-hye.
With about three months left before the presidential election, a power struggle is a recipe for a disaster. Apparently, party leaders act as if that was the last thing on their mind. I am not worried about the individual candidate but for a loss of focus for Park’s sagging candidacy. What if her candidacy loses steam? That would make the Dec. 19 presidential election a lot less interesting.